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Rh "Scrutator," and carried on a skirmish with Max Müller. Sanderson, then a junior at the Foreign Office, drew the same inference. For they had information that iron girders were ready in Germany, of the proper length to bridge the rivers on the road to Paris; and it is on a bridge of this sort, made with the proper measurements, that they crossed the Moselle above Metz, as was reported by Hozier. The Government had no such suspicion; and the Edinburgh Review had an article in October, the authorship of which could not be doubtful for a moment, containing these words: "The whole proceedings of the French Government in the conduct of its controversy constituted one series of unrelieved and lamentable errors." By that time, however, a well-informed diplomatist, in the confidence of German headquarters, had written as follows, 30th September: "From statements made to me confidentially, I have obtained the certainty that the Hohenzollern candidature was deliberately arranged by Bismarck with a view of bringing on the collision with France in such a way as to make Germany appear to be acting on the defensive." Treitschke and Bernhardi at the time, and Bismarck in 1874, regarded the French aggression as the effect of an Ultramontane plot, part of the same design as the Vatican Council; and in the same connection it was often represented as the act of the Spanish Empress, prompted by the prelates and chaplains of the Tuileries. Bismarck affirmed it in the midst of the Culturkampf, to rouse a feeling against Rome. The same view made an impression on Ministers in London. Our agents in Alsace found the Protestants in a state of alarm, expecting a new St. Bartholomew, prodigal of stories of Catholic exultation and menace.

The part played by the Empress is difficult to determine. Lord Granville wrote, 16th September, to Ponsonby: "I am glad the Queen thinks of writing to the Empress. Her misfortune is great, although it is much owing to herself—Mexico, Rome, war with Prussia." General Du Barail, one of the first men in France, says in